Digital Commons Network^™

Long-Term Neural Activity Recorders Using Energy-Based Sensing, Compressive Computation And Data Logging, Darshit Mehta

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Insects are ideal candidates for developing bio-robotic systems owing to their ability to thrive in almost any environment. For example, neurons in their exquisite olfactory sensory systems can be tapped to create a sensing platform for standoff chemical monitoring. However, for enabling such cyborg systems, it is vital that the neural activity of a freely behaving organism can be measured for long periods of time. The current state-of-the-art neural recording techniques are power-intensive and they either need batteries, which make them too bulky for insects, or they have to maintain a continuous telemetry link to an external power source which …

Application-Specific Memory Subsystems, Joseph George Wingbermuehle

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The disparity in performance between processors and main memories has

led computer architects to incorporate large cache hierarchies in

modern computers. These cache hierarchies are designed to be

general-purpose in that they strive to provide the best possible

performance across a wide range of applications. However, such a memory

subsystem does not necessarily provide the best possible performance for

a particular application.

Although general-purpose memory subsystems are desirable when the

work-load is unknown and the memory subsystem must remain fixed,

when this is not the case a custom memory subsystem may be beneficial.

For example, in an application-specific integrated circuit …